To enhance their economic security, the European Union and the United States should start building strategic reserves of critical commodities in the context of a cooperative framework that commits them to coordinating purchases and providing emergency supplies to one another in case of severe supply disruptions. Such an arrangement would help mitigate critical import vulnerabilities by limiting market instability and deterring covert and overt geo-economic coercive threats. This is the argument put forward by Markus Jaeger, research fellow at DGAP (German Council on Foreign Relations) and an adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York, in this policy brief.
The policy brief is a publication of the Transatlantic Expert Group set up by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Bertelsmann Foundation in Washington, D.C.